Not the People who elected them thats for sure.
MW - Online Sportsbooks Forums - NFL MAKES FANTASY PASS
NFL MAKES FANTASY PASS
By GEOFF EARLE
NY POST
October 10, 2006 -- WASHINGTON - The National Football League used a big bucks lobbyist to ram through Internet gambling-curbing legislation in the final minutes of the legislative session, sources revealed.
But opponents of the bill charge that the NFL broke the rules when it fast-tracked legislation that never even got a vote in the Senate - a trick play that provided a big exemption for fantasy football.
The NFL runs its own fantasy football site, and gets royalties from others. Fantasy contest companies generate up to $200 million a year, according to an industry association.
The NFL hired lawyer Marty Gold of Covington & Burling and a former counsel to Majority Leader Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) to design its playbook.
Gold and his firm billed a stunning $700,000 to the NFL in 2005, according to disclosure reports, lobbying on issues from Internet gambling to steroids.
Last month, right before lawmakers left town to campaign, the league was struggling for a way to overcome opposition to clearing the gambling bill. The league decided to try to tack the gambling bill onto final defense legislation that couldn't be amended.
Gold says it wasn't his idea. NFL Chairman Roger Goodell and past chairman Paul Tagliabue wrote Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) that the bill was an "achievement" he could be proud of, but that couldn't get through the Senate by regular means.
Warner, a senior Navy and Marine veteran, refused.
He wrote Frist - a likely presidential candidate and champion of the gambling bill in the Senate - voicing his "strong objection" to including it in a bipartisan bill for U.S. troops.
Frist relented - but then hatched a new plan to add it to a bill to secure the nation's ports. Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), who holds sway in a key primary state, wrote the original House gambling bill, backed by social conservatives.
House Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) was more compliant, and allowed it onto his port bill without a vote by negotiators.
"I'm not going to stop a bill because of Internet gambling," explained King, who wrote the port bill. "That was their final offer for that day."
Lawyer Tony Cabot, who represents Las Vegas casinos, said he was assuming that "those Republicans got beat down pretty bad by Frist and Hastert. I think they thought they had no choice."
Just goes to show you who trhe politicians in this country really represent.
It sure isn't you and I ....or any of the people who elected them, Its the special intrests that have the money.
Peace
Billyb
